


The Uniform Code

by fluffernutter8



Category: Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Miscarriage, Navy, The Thousand Dollar Tan Line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 01:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2005158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <br/><i>"Hey, so, sorry I had to miss our last date. I, uh, lost my Internet privileges. Something about insubordination."</i>
  <br/><i>"That doesn’t sound like you," she said, eyes wide.</i>
  <br/><i>"It was a frame job, I tell you."</i>
  <br/><i>"So, business as usual."</i>
</p>
<p>Exactly what constituted this insubordination?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Uniform Code

_Logan had fallen asleep quickly the night before, exhausted and unable to help it, but he was up early in the morning, roaming the deck._

_They’d done night maneuvers just a few hours ago, Logan and six others. The deck had been pitching, rocking in the waves, which made everything harder._

_"Respect the dark," his first instructor had told him, and he did. He knew the dark, respected its secrets and loved its challenges. That didn’t make it easier to try to find the right part of the wavering mass on which to land. It didn’t make it easier to catch the cables that guided his plane safely._

_He’d missed them four times last night. Boltering, it was called. Normally with the dark and the pitching deck it wouldn’t have been a problem. It was expected. He had been in the room before, dozens of times since the start of this first cruise, while the squadron watched their comrades in the air. There were critiques and betting over how many more times it would take each pilot to land, but on nights like that one it was good humored rather than strictly competitive. Everyone knew how hard it was, knew that they couldn’t have done much better. But it had been everyone else’s lucky night. Moose, CTD, everyone was down within two tries, until it was just him left in the sky. One more bolter and he’d have had to refuel. He remembered the clinginess of his flight suit and the gummy airlessness of his throat as he had tried that last time._

_"Beautiful," he had heard in his ear. Carol from air traffic control. She was from Georgia, and all the ends of her sentences sounded like she meant to finish them with "honey" or "darlin.’" The other ATC boys called her "Mama." "Y’all look just fine there." He had relaxed into her voice and come in straight and smooth, like he could see himself within the radar crosshairs._

_"That last one was gorgeous," Molehill told him as they stripped off their flight suits later. "And you’ve got so much green anyway, the first ones won’t matter."_

_"Thanks," Logan had muttered. His sweaty T-shirt was still painted unpleasantly against his back._

_It was true that on the chart that recorded successful flights and landings amongst the squadron,_ _Logan’s line was mostly green. But there was a reason for that. He had earned every one of those with gritted teeth and steady hands because this was the only thing he was good at. If there was a little less green, if he made too many mistakes, he could be grounded or even reassigned. Pilots were an investment, and the Navy didn’t bother with investments that weren’t panning out and had the potential to ruin_ _other investments like aircraft._

_Logan was headed to the place on the deck that he had found to think, on the edge with rigging and sea below. The trouble was that someone was already sitting there. At first Logan thought that the green shirt belonged to one of the airmen who signaled the takeoffs from the ground. He knew most of them, but sometimes they were hard to recognize without their helmets and duct-tape striped vests, without their leaping sign language of signals and salutes. He started to turn and jog back in the other direction, but he had gotten a little too close. The figure turned._

_It was Cooper, one of the longest serving guys in the squad. Logan figured he would go over, say hey and then find another place to think, but he regretted it as he sat down on the deck edge. Cooper was shoving a hand across his eyes, wiping away tears. Logan looked toward the horizon._

_"Hey, Cooper."_

_"Morning." Cooper faced out toward the sea as well. His profile gave away nothing. "What’re you doin’ up this early, Sprout?" Logan got a thrill every time he heard his call sign, not that it was good or even particularly significant. It was a reference to when he had taken up smoking for few months_ _during flight school_ _and then switched to sunflower seeds when he was quitting, bags and bags of them that made the others tease that there would be a line of flowers sprouting behind his jet. But Logan had been certain that his call sign would be Hollywood, and so every use of the name felt like a victory._

_"Well I just couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to miss a minute of all the great sightseeing opportunities. Seeing the world from the comfort of the boat," Logan said in a peppy-tough recruiter voice, looking out at the endless water. He instantly regretted it. The squad was mostly casual with each other but Cooper was usually more serious._

_To his surprise, Cooper snorted. “Yeah, what a great opportunity this is.” Cooper was typically the embodiment of the squad’s motto, “Deus et Patria,” a real man of God and country. Logan wasn’t sure how to ask why that had changed, if he was allowed to ask. Everyone in the squad was on good enough terms, but Logan had never been close to Cooper. It was Annie who Logan talked to if he needed it, D-WIF who pulled him up for karaoke when they had liberty, Columbus who made him laugh harder than anyone, Scarecrow who ruffled Logan’s hair_ _(as much as was possible)_ _and clapped him on the back after a flight. Cooper was a good guy in cards, an easy guy to trust in the air, but there was a certain stiffness to him._

_It was a year since they’d met, but Logan had never been really sure that Cooper liked him._

_"You alright, 43?" he said anyway after a minute._ _That was Cooper’s call sign, because he sounded exactly-_ exactly _, as if he were the world’s best, most consistent impersonator- like George W. Bush. They tended to call Cooper by his name when they weren’t in the air, but Logan wanted that extra layer of non-intrusive professionalism._

_"Doin’ just fine, thanks for asking."_

_"Your kids alright?" Logan asked, small-talk, already preparing to get to his feet. He knew that Cooper had a six year old and a baby coming in a few months._

_"Yep, my kid’s fine." Cooper opened one of his fists and efficiently tore up the piece of paper that he had been holding. He tossed it in the water. Logan caught a glimpse of ultrasound filminess, but as it hit the water it disappeared immediately. Cooper looked like he wanted to dive in after it. "Just the one now, but she’s doing great." His voice was unspeakably bitter. He glanced at Logan for a moment, a gauging, tough-guy look. "I got an email from Jess. She lost the baby. She spent the night in the hospital, and I had to find out by email."_

_"I’m sorry, man. That’s-" Logan blew out a breath. He wished Cooper had just lied and said everything was fine._

_"Cruise ends in another five months. How am I supposed to fly in and look her in the face when she dealt with this all by herself for five months? How are we supposed to rebuild from that?"_

_It was a question Logan had asked himself since the night Veronica had showed up at his door and told him that she was leaving. Or maybe even before, when he had realized that smacking guys like Piz around, the instinct for violence seething in his blood, was not what he wanted out of life. How was he supposed to move on from that destruction, that confusion of self?_

_"You find something you love and you hold on to it. You love Jess, you talk to her so you don’t lose her. You’re on cruise for five months. Modern technology is your new wizzo." WSOs, the occupants of the secondary jet seat, were technically weapons systems officers, but they were the closest thing the squadron had to a wingman. Logan hoped it would translate, that saying it would prove that he wasn’t a civilian anymore._

_Even as he said it, though, all the advice sounded simplistic, the flimsy comfort of a kid. Cooper nodded anyway. He wasn’t a touchy guy, but he pressed a hand to Logan’s shoulder briefly. “Growin’ up quick, Sprout. Thanks.”_ _, He moved his hand to the back of his own neck. “Nice job last night. With the weather, you did real good.”_

_"Thanks," Logan said, and he knew it and he meant it. He loved doing this, and he would hold onto it._

"Why’d you bring me down?" Logan growled. "I could have gone another hour."

"You were pushing twelve for the day," Cooper said, not looking up as he wrote in the logbook. Logan couldn’t see his eyes, but his commander pin glinted in the light. “We’ve got Dingo and 3-PO going up. You’re done.”

"There’s a guy out there and I’m done?" Logan clenched a fist. One of the airmen, Chris, a guy who gave a proud, molasses-slow smile every time he guided someone successfully off the deck, hadn’t showed up for watch. They were on the third hour of their grid search and all they’d found was a floating piece of plastic. “That’s bullshit.”

The energy in the room shifted. Someone against the wall, Annie or Marco, gave a small cough. Logan knew that it had been a mistake. The squad might be pretty casual, but you didn’t talk that way to the CO. Cooper could court-martial him for insubordination if he wanted.

Cooper tucked the log under his arm. He looked up slowly, past Logan’s shoulder to where family pictures were stuck to the wall. Logan had put one of him and Veronica up, one where she was looking up at him with a smile, but he suspected that Cooper was looking diagonal to it: taken at Sea World, the commander and his wife, their daughter and toddler son. He opened the log back up. “No Internet. One week. Go to bed, Echolls.”

Logan nodded, grateful. It meant that it would be a while before he would see Veronica’s face again, before he could mention it to her with a smart remark, but he could take that.

He’d joined up for the flying and for someone to keep him in line. But he stayed for things like this: for knowing that the things that he did would come back and flower into something he could be proud of.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for favorite book quote day of tumblr's Logan and Veronica Appreciation Week.
> 
> Yeah, non-military person trying to write military stuff. Not sure how this’ll go over. Terminology is probably all screwy, and jets don’t fly rescue for men overboard as far as I know. Anyway, this was heavily influenced by my recent viewing of the PBS documentary series Carrier. Cooper’s story is based on that of Lt. Cmd. Kevin Mclaughlin, and Carol from Air Traffic Control is inspired by Ensign Susan Clapp. Logan’s squad is, despite my misgivings, VFA-32, the Flying Swordsmen. (I’m going to pretend that the Truman is moved within the next couple of years to be headquartered somewhere in California.)


End file.
